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Wizz Air downgrades EX-YU routes over winter

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Low cost carrier Wizz Air will downgrade a number of its routes at its bases in the former Yugoslavia from year-round to seasonal summer operations. Tuzla will see the biggest reduction, with four routes to be rested over winter, while two will become seasonal out of Skopje, and one each from Belgrade, Niš and Ohrid. The low cost airline will no longer maintain flights from Bosnia and Herzegovina's third largest city to Billund, Baden Baden, Stockholm Skavsta and Vaxjo. All four destinations are expected to resume from April next year, with tickets already on sale. Tuzla Airport recently said it was negotiating the launch of new routes with Wizz Air and the potential stationing of a third aircraft in the city.

The budget carrier has also downgraded its flights from Skopje to Barcelona and Vaxjo to seasonal operations. Furthermore, the airline has discontinued winter sales for its Ohrid - London Luton flights. The route was upgraded from seasonal to year-round operations several months ago but has now again been turned into a summer service only. Commenting on its operations in Macedonia, the airline recently said, "The routes from Skopje to Vaxjo and Barcelona and from Ohrid to London Luton have been optimised according to the market requests and will be operated only in the summer season". It added, "Wizz Air underlines its commitment to the Macedonian customers by expanding its low fare network and creating more affordable travel opportunities from Skopje and Ohrid airports, currently offering thirty routes to fourteen countries and 1.6 million seats on sale in 2018, a 23% growth compared to 2017".

Wizz Air has also downgraded its year-round operations between Belgrade and Larnaca to seasonal summer flights. The carrier maintained two weekly services between the two cities. Air Serbia has since extended its summer operations to Cyprus into the winter months, replacing the low cost carrier. Wizz Air's Larnaca flights are set to resume on April 2, 2019. On the other hand, the carrier will terminate services between Malmo and Niš this winter season. The last flight is scheduled to operate on January 7, 2019 after which ticket sales have been suspended. It is the second route the airline will be ending to the southeast Serbian city, with services from Eindhoven discontinued in late March.

As previously reported, Wizz Air will introduce several new routes to the former Yugoslavia this winter. The airline will expand in Pristina with the launch of three new services, from Memmingen, Basel and Dortmund, starting October 30, and will commence flights from Vienna to Niš and Ohrid from mid-November.

"opening up" is just stupid code for slashing their prices for LCC; if they lower prices for LCC, they would have to lower the price for all others as well and what is the point in aiming to handle 2 million passengers while having lower income than they would have with one million full paying passengers? i really hate the idea that they attract LCC and make up the lost revenue by taxes

there is no scenario at the moment to get more than 2 million passengers use SJJ, no matter how low the fares are (we are a small city and have limited infrastructure to handle significant more tourists)

they should experiment a little with their prices, like lowering their prices for times of the day when the airport is almost empty, because they do not fit the waves of network airlines. if they are so keen on low prices they could fly on Saturdays or between 9:00 and 12:00 or in the late afternoon when the airport is on standby

@anon 13:05Are you the regular citizen of Sarajevo or airport shareholder? You sound like the second one. :)Sarajevo is a landlocked city, with poor road and rail infrastructure so flying is crucial for you. Or I am getting something wrong? :)Attracting more visitors and having local people and diaspora travel more is way for the airport to make money from all business segments not just handling planes. You guys really need more conectivity at affordable prices. You do not want to fly to Paris or Berlin for 100 EUR on average?!

"Fuel consumption difference between a 20-year old A320 and a brand new (non-sharklet) A320ceo is minimal."

Not quite, engine improvements, less dirt, less condensed water in the fuselage insulation, even the operational empty weight of a new aircraft is tons less than of an old one. It means less weight to be carried around=less fuel consumption.

Too late?!Imagine you have a bar. Another bar opens and nobody will go there because there is already a bar. Yes it takes time to gain market position and inform people you actually fly the route but it has never been easier with fare search engines.

Wizz Air has apperantly for long time had issues attracting crew, primarly pilots to its TZL base. Does anyone know more about it and could it be one of the reasons?I'm sure a mix of low demand and aim to avoid unnecessary extra costs due to bad weather on cheap sold flights is a factor as well.And maybe consequences of the management turning the milky cow the back by trying to attract other carriers as well the delayed expansion of the infrastructure.If I'm not wrong, many TZL flights are turned with a delay and during winter it will be much harder for them to catch that time up taken in fact the TZL and generally bad winter weather.

They have crew shortage in general, not only in TZL. Also, not a lot of non-exyu people would love to live in TZL. It takes more than half an hour to reach the airport and Tuzla is not an international city to begin with.

Mainly pilot shortage, which they rarely hire into the bases but deploy while hired/having contracts in BUD.And true, TZL isn't the first pick, while SKP actually is pretty popular as living cost & quality vs income is good.In TZL is even better, but it fails on life quality/joy + most of your winter flights will be delayed and cost you off time in case you get diverted to BUD/BEG etc.

Finances or not, I know they have a special business model, but I can't stop wondering if it's healthy or sick, when they the same month have several 20% offers.Of course on the cheapest ticket you save peanuts snd cost them even less, while they sell additional tickets, but I've literally been on non seasonal TZL flights where very few pax paid more then 20 EUR for the ticket and most 10 EUR, and the in-flight service didn't bring much revenue either.

I am not very sure. CPH is already connected to SKP and SOF, with plenty of frequencies.So if MMX didn't work out, I doubt we see any route introduction.NYO seems to be doing well. If Nemjee is reading this, maybe he can show some figures for INI-NYO.I also think INI can be linked to OSL or TRF.

They will replace these two Skopje routes as soon as they win the subsidies tender. I think that's why they made them seasonal in the first place because under the tender requirements they have to launch new routes from SKP straight away (by January I think).

thats why they committed TWO new aircrafts in MK in the anulled tender.. because they think they cant grow. Svasta procitas. Wizz have/had plans for two aircrafts in MK but we will see now with the new tender if they stick to their initial plans

First they will need to fix their issues (low catergory ILS vs. constant fog, night closure for ATC staff shortage, lack of gates, lack of immigration staff, lack of restarurant etc) with serving two aircraft at all (let alone three).

Everything will be back to normal next year once they receive the new planes. They are downgrading because of their Vienna base turned to be a major success for them and they want to expand there before Laudamotion becomes too strong.

"heir Vienna base turned to be a major success" i hoped the same, but is their any data to back up that? i can only see how they flood the city with discount offers like FR/Lauda and the prices are often surprisingly low just days before the flight

No wonder. Relatively speaking, seasonalizing a route is nothing when you have 100+ aircraft and all the jazz when you have 10. Seems you're implying equal effect, which couldn't be further from the truth.

They resume Larnaca from April 2x per week. You are right about them being expensive on this route. With luggage they are usually more expensive then JU. Still good to see JU upgrade their flights so we don't loose links to Cyprus in winter.

Well if you attract more tourists to spend in the city then you will have more economic activity and more tax revenue to pay for roads and teachers. Assuming you are able and willing to collect the tax money.

Tuzla is a bit problematic during the winter because of adverse weather conditions. A lot of planes get diverted. Even during the summer they were forced to divert to BEG several times. I doubt that is good for a LCC.

Continued investment in our people with the launch of the Wizz Air Pilot Academy program in Hungary. This follows the very successful launches of the program in Poland, Bulgaria and Romania already this year.

Honestly, Skopje-Barcelona in winter? Many of these ex-YU routes are simply far-fetched. Following the success of Maribor-Antwerp, I guess. Also, these so called gasto routes - outside of the holiday season - it's not like people are working in Denmark or in the Netherlands and sleeping in Bosnia or southern Serbia.

Most of the routes are not sustainable in the long run. It creates demand in short term because of the prices but then who will fly those routes constantly, except diaspora or gastros whose numbers aer limited. For growth those markets are lacking the diversity in Pax structure (biz, tourists, diaspora and that in large numbers).

It is hard to get more business travelers as there is as much economic activity in the region. Tourists you can get. One great recent example is Transavia with Belgrade flights. The growth of Dutch visitors is noticable in the city center and competition has slashed previous horrible JU prices.

Agree with both, the ex-Yu market is premium pax defficient and the VFR demand is limited so the growth can only be achived through the leisure segment.

But there can be only two types of sustainable leisure routes, either to the true leisure markets as the Adriatic coast or to the city break destinations. Niš, Tuzla, Osijek, Priština and Skopje are neither. At the moment and for the foreseeable time only Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana (and possibly Sarajevo) may be regarded as the plausible city break destinations.

Wizz Air Airbus aircraft problems in 2018:16 September aircraft diverted due to burn instruments and installation in the cockpit due to thunderstorm en-route,from Nis to Bale after landing two passengers and a crew member go for a medical check.

22-August Wizz Air Airbus A321, registration HA-LXI performing flight W6-3071 from Bucharest Otopeni (Romania) to Eindhoven (Netherlands) with 228 people on board, was on approach to Eindhoven when the crew reported they had a flight controls problem in tunderstorm area and needed to level off and enter a hold,The aircraft landed safely on Eindhoven's runway.he airport reported the aircraft suffered a flaps electric problem from thunderstorm cloud.

30 July 2018 A Wizz Air Airbus A320-200, registration HA-LWO performing flight W6-2542 from Tel Aviv (Israel) to Riga (Latvia) with 182 people on board, was climbing through FL170 out of Tel Aviv's runway 26 when the crew stopped the climb due to a problem with one of the engines (V2527), the strong air turbulence shut the engine down and returned to Tel Aviv for a safe landing on runway 21 about 40 minutes after departure.

15 June A Wizz Air Airbus A320, registration HA-LWK performing flight W6-7732 from Basel/Mulhouse (Switzerland/France) to Skopje (Macedonia), was in Serbian sky in heavy thunderstorm . The aircraft continued for a SAFE and normal landing with only 1 engine in Ohrid Airport,the pilot was macedonian nationality and decided to land in Ohrid Airport.

British AaIB rated the occurrence a serious incident and opened an investigation.

Anybody who works for Wizz Air will tell you this safety rating is a joke. Fortunately for Wizz Air, many of their “events” don’t make the headlines because Eastern Europe very much prefers low cost over safety and media plays along.

"Anybody who works for Wizz Air will tell you this safety rating is a joke. Fortunately for Wizz Air, many of their “events” don’t make the headlines because Eastern Europe very much prefers low cost over safety and media plays along."

Yep, sure. IOSA and all the EU-authorities of the countries they use (incl UK CAA where Wizz Air UK is based) are keeping it quiet, right?

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